Space Technology

By: Kevin L. Powers
One of the more interesting Japanese sci-fi films in the past few years. Director Takashi Yamazaki’s vision of the future is bleak in that the human race is almost completely annihilated by the year 2084 by an invading alien race bent on killing every living thing on the planet. Just as the last resistance movement is being gunned down by an unyielding alien army young Japanese girl Milly (Anne Suzuki) is sent back in time to the early twenty-first century days before the alien armada invades. She inlists the help of a rouge assassin Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro) to help her infiltrate a secret government lab where they are harboring a crashed alien space craft and its only living occupant.

There are also subplots involving Japanese mafia boss Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitara), who wants the ultimate power and will do anything to posess it, and Milly, who wants to change events of the past to ensure the future of other characters in the film. It may sound a little bit overwhelming but Yamazaki’s script (with Kenya Hirata) does a fantastic job of grounding all the techno-bable in realistic terms whiles also employing some amazing fight choreography that keeps the film moving at an amazing pace.

The only fault goes to some of the special effects that look great for all the future scenes with the aliens but when there are explosions you’re not really convinced it wasn’t CGI. They would’ve gone better with doing all the major explosions with miniatures and/or as practicals.

Performances were better than average for this type of film and it never got too heavy handed, which happens all to often with these types of films. You just need to sit back and relax and injoy the spectical. It definitely gives any of the MATRIX sequels a run for their money.